Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again

  by new masters.

  Political activity, therefore, is a special kind of behaviour,

  characterised by its complete unscrupulousness, and occurring only among

  small groups of the population, especially among dissatisfied groups

  whose talents do not get free play under the existing form of society.

  The great mass of the people--and this is where (2) ties up with (1)--will

  always be unpolitical. In effect, therefore, humanity is divided into two

  classes: the self-seeking, hypocritical minority, and the brainless mob

  whose destiny is always to be led or driven, as one gets a pig back to

  the sty by kicking it on the bottom or by rattling a stick inside a

  swill-bucket, according to the needs of the moment. And this beautiful

  pattern is to continue for ever. Individuals may pass from one category

  to another, whole classes may destroy other classes and rise to the

  dominant position, but the division of humanity into rulers and ruled is

  unalterable. In their capabilities, as in their desires and needs, men

  are not equal. There is an "iron law of oligarchy", which would operate

  even if democracy were not impossible for mechanical reasons.

  It is curious that in all his talk about the struggle for power, Burnham

  never stops to ask why people want power. He seems to assume that power

  hunger, although only dominant in comparatively few people, is a natural

  instinct that does not have to be explained, like the desire for food. He

  also assumes that the division of society into classes serves the same

  purpose in all ages. This is practically to ignore the history of

  hundreds of years. When Burnham's master, Machiavelli, was writing, class

  divisions were not only unavoidable, but desirable. So long as methods of

  production were primitive, the great mass of the people were necessarily

  tied down to dreary, exhausting manual labour: and a few people had to be

  set free from such labour, otherwise civilisation could not maintain

  itself, let alone make any progress. But since the arrival of the machine

  the whole pattern has altered. The justification for class distinctions,

  if there is a justification, is no longer the same, because there is no

  mechanical reason why the average human being should continue to be a

  drudge. True, drudgery persists; class distinctions are probably

  re-establishing themselves in a new form, and individual liberty is on

  the down-grade: but as these developments are now technically avoidable,

  they must have some psychological cause which Burnham makes no attempt to

  discover. The question that he ought to ask, and never does ask, is: Why

  does the lust for naked power become a major human motive exactly NOW,

  when the dominion of man over man is ceasing to be necessary? As for the

  claim that "human nature", or "inexorable laws" of this and that, make

  Socialism impossible, it is simply a projection of the past into the

  future. In effect, Burnham argues that because a society of free and

  equal human beings has never existed, it never can exist. By the same

  argument one could have demonstrated the impossibility of aeroplanes in

  1900, or of motor cars in 1850.

  The notion that the machine has altered human relationships, and that in

  consequence Machiavelli is out of date, is a very obvious one. If Burnham

  fails to deal with it, it can, I think, only be because his own power

  instinct leads him to brush aside any suggestion that the Machiavellian

  world of force, fraud, and tyranny may somehow come to an end. It is

  important to bear in mind what I said above: that Burnham's theory is

  only a variant--an American variant, and interesting because of its

  comprehensiveness--of the power worship now so prevalent among

  intellectuals. A more normal variant, at any rate in England, is

  Communism. If one examines the people who, having some idea of what the

  Russian r�gime is like, are strongly russophile, one finds that, on the

  whole, they belong to the "managerial" class of which Burnham writes.

  That is, they are not managers in the narrow sense, but scientists,

  technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats,

  professional politicians: in general, middling people who feel themselves

  cramped by a system that is still partly aristocratic, and are hungry for

  more power and more prestige. These people look towards the USSR and see

  in it, or think they see, a system which eliminates the upper class,

  keeps the working class in its place, and hands unlimited power to people

  very similar to themselves. It was only AFTER the Soviet r�gime became

  unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers,

  began to show an interest in it. Burnham, although the English russophile

  intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish:

  the wish to destroy the old, equalitarian version of Socialism and usher

  in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his

  hands on the whip. Burnham at least has the honesty to say that Socialism

  isn't coming; the others merely say that Socialism is coming, and then

  give the word "Socialism" a new meaning which makes nonsense of the old

  one. But his theory, for all its appearance of objectivity, is the

  rationalisation of a wish. There is no strong reason for thinking that it

  tells us anything about the future, except perhaps the immediate future.

  It merely tells us what kind of world the "managerial" class themselves,

  or at least the more conscious and ambitious members of the class, would

  like to live in.

  Fortunately the "managers" are not so invincible as Burnham believes. It

  is curious how persistently, in THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION, he ignores the

  advantages, military as well as social, enjoyed by a democratic country.

  At every point the evidence is squeezed in order to show the strength,

  vitality, and durability of Hitler's crazy r�gime. Germany is expanding

  rapidly, and "rapid territorial expansion has always been a sign, not of

  decadence...but of renewal". Germany makes war successfully, and "the

  ability to make war well is never a sign of decadence but of its

  opposite". Germany also "inspires in millions of persons a fanatical

  loyalty. This, too, never accompanies decadence". Even the cruelty and

  dishonesty of the Nazi r�gime are cited in its favour, since "the young,

  new, rising social order is, as against the old, more likely to resort on

  a large scale to lies, terror, persecution". Yet, within only five years

  this young, new, rising social order had smashed itself to pieces and

  become, in Burnham's usage of the word, decadent. And this had happened

  quite largely because of the "managerial" (i.e. undemocratic) structure

  which Burnham admires. The immediate cause of the German defeat was the

  unheard-of folly of attacking the USSR while Britain was still undefeated

  and America was manifestly getting ready to fight. Mistakes of this

  magnitude can only be made, or at any rate they are most likely to be

  made, in countries where public opinion has no power. So long as the

  common man can get a hearing, such elementary
rules as not fighting all

  your enemies simultaneously are less likely to be violated.

  But, in any case, one should have been able to see from the start that

  such a movement as Nazism could not produce any good or stable result.

  Actually, so long as they were winning, Burnham seems to have seen

  nothing wrong with the methods of the Nazis. Such methods, he says, only

  appear wicked because they are new:

  There is no historical law that polite manners and "Justice" shall

  conquer. In history there is always the question of WHOSE manners and

  WHOSE justice. A rising social class and a new order of society have got

  to break through the old moral codes just as they must break through the

  old economic and political institutions. Naturally, from the point of

  view of the old, they are monsters. If they win, they take care in due

  time of manners and morals.

  This implies that literally anything can become right or wrong if the

  dominant class of the moment so wills it. It ignores the fact that

  certain rules of conduct have to be observed if human society is to hold

  together at all. Burnham, therefore, was unable to see that the crimes

  and follies of the Nazi r�gime MUST lead by one route or another to

  disaster. So also with his new-found admiration for Stalinism. It is too

  early to say in just what way the Russian r�gime will destroy itself. If

  I had to make a prophecy, I should say that a continuation of the Russian

  policies of the last fifteen years--and internal and external policy, of

  course, are merely two facets of the same thing--can only lead to a war

  conducted with atomic bombs, which will make Hitler's invasion look like

  a tea-party. But at any rate, the Russian r�gime will either democratise

  itself, or it will perish. The huge, invincible, everlasting slave empire

  of which Burnham appears to dream will not be established, or, if

  established, will not endure, because slavery is no longer a stable basis

  for human society.

  One cannot always make positive prophecies, but there are times when one

  ought to be able to make negative ones. No one could have been expected

  to foresee the exact results of the Treaty of Versailles, but millions of

  thinking people could and did foresee that those results would be bad.

  Plenty of people, though not so many in this case, can foresee that the

  results of the settlement now being forced on Europe will also be bad.

  And to refrain from admiring Hitler or Stalin--that, too, should not

  require an enormous intellectual effort.

  But it is partly a moral effort. That a man of Burnham's gifts should

  have been able for a while to think of Nazism as something rather

  admirable, something that could and probably would build up a workable

  and durable social order, shows what damage is done to the sense of

  reality by the cultivation of what is now called "realism".

  [Note: With title "Second Thoughts on James Burnham", 1946; with title

  "James Burnham", 1947; printed as a pamphlet with title "James Burnham

  and the Managerial Revolution", Summer 1946]

  PLEASURE SPOTS

  Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by

  a female journalist and describing the pleasure resort of the future. She

  had recently been spending some time at Honolulu, where the rigours of

  war do not seem to have been very noticeable. However, "a transport

  pilot...told me that with all the inventiveness packed into this war, it

  was a pity someone hadn't found out how a tired and life-hungry man could

  relax, rest, play poker, drink, and make love, all at once, and round the

  clock, and come out of it feeling good and fresh and ready for the job

  again." This reminded her of an entrepreneur she had met recently who was

  planning a "pleasure spot which he thinks will catch on tomorrow as dog

  racing and dance halls did yesterday." The entrepreneur's dream is

  described in some detail:

  His blue-prints pictured a space covering several acres, under a series

  of sliding roofs-for the British weather is unreliable and with a central

  space spread over with an immense dance floor made of translucent plastic

  which can be illuminated from beneath. Around it are grouped other

  functional spaces, at different levels. Balcony bars and restaurants

  commanding high views of the city roofs, and ground-level replicas. A

  battery of skittle alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated

  by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and summery pool,

  for playtime bathers. Sunlight lamps over the pools to simulate high

  summer on days when the roofs don't slide back to disclose a hot sun in a

  cloudless sky. Rows of bunks on which people wearing sun-glasses and

  slips can lie and start a tan or deepen an existing one under a sunray

  lamp.

  Music seeping through hundreds of grills connected with a central

  distributing stage, where dance or symphonic orchestras play or the radio

  programme can be caught, amplified, and disseminated. Outside, two

  1,000-car parks. One, free. The other, an open-air cinema drive-in, cars

  queueing to move through turnstiles, and the film thrown on a giant

  screen facing a row of assembled cars. Uniformed male attendants check

  the cars, provide free aid and water, sell petrol and oil. Girls in white

  satin slacks take orders for buffet dishes and drinks, and bring them on

  trays.

  Whenever one hears such phrases as "pleasure spot", "pleasure resort",

  "pleasure city", it is difficult not to remember the often quoted opening

  of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan".

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  So twice five miles of fertile ground

  With walls and towers were girdled round:

  And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

  Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

  And here were forests ancient as the hills,

  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

  But it will be seen that Coleridge has got it all wrong. He strikes a

  false note straight off with that talk about "sacred" rivers and

  "measureless" caverns. In the hands of the above-mentioned entrepreneur,

  Kubla Khan's project would have become something quite different. The

  caverns, air-conditioned, discreetly lighted and with their original

  rocky interior buried under layers of tastefully-coloured plastics, would

  be turned into a series of tea-grottoes in the Moorish, Caucasian or

  Hawaiian styles. Alph, the sacred river, would be dammed up to make an

  artificially-warmed bathing pool, while the sunless sea would be

  illuminated from below with pink electric lights, and one would cruise

  over it in real Venetian gondolas each equipped with its own radio set.

  The forests and "spots of greenery" referred to by Coleridge would be

  cleaned up to make way for glass-covered tennis courts, a bandstand, a

  roller-skating rink and perhaps a nine-hole golf course. In short, there

  would be everything that a "life-hungry" man could desire.

  I have no doub
t that, all over the world, hundreds of pleasure resorts

  similar to the one described above are now being planned, and perhaps are

  even being built. It is unlikely that they will be finished-world events

  will see to that-but they represent faithfully enough the modern

  civilised man's idea of pleasure. Something of the kind is already

  partially attained in the more magnificent dance halls, movie palaces,

  hotels, restaurants and luxury liners. On a pleasure cruise or in a Lyons

  Corner House one already gets something more than a glimpse of this

  future paradise. Analysed, its main characteristics are these:

  1. One is never alone.

  2. One never does anything for oneself.

  3. One is never within sight of wild vegetation or natural objects

  of any kind.

  4. Light and temperature are always artificially regulated.

  5. One is never out of the sound of music.

  The music-and if possible it should be the same music for everybody-is

  the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and

  conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of

  birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude. The

  radio is already consciously used for this purpose by innumerable people.

  In very many English homes the radio is literally never turned off,

  though it is manipulated from time to time so as to make sure that only

  light music will come out of it. I know people who will keep the radio

  playing all through a meal and at the same time continue talking just

  loudly enough for the voices and the music to cancel out. This is done

  with a definite purpose. The music prevents the conversation from

  becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one

  from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of

  that dreaded thing, thought. For:

  The lights must never go out.

  The music must always play,

  Lest we should see where we are;

  Lost in a haunted wood,

  Children afraid of the dark

  Who have never been happy or good.

  It is difficult not to feel that the unconscious aim in the most typical

  modern pleasure resorts is a return to the womb. For there, too, one was

  never alone, one never saw daylight, the temperature was always

  regulated, one did not have to worry about work or food, and one's

  thoughts, if any, were drowned by a continuous rhythmic throbbing.

  When one looks at Coleridge's very different conception of a "pleasure

  dome", one sees that it revolves partly round gardens and partly round

  caverns, rivers, forests and mountains with "deep romantic chasms"-in

  short, round what is called Nature. But the whole notion of admiring

  Nature, and feeling a sort of religious awe in the presence of glaciers,

  deserts or waterfalls, is bound up with the sense of man's littleness and

  weakness against the power of the universe. The moon is beautiful partly

  because we cannot reach it, the sea is impressive because one can never

  be sure of crossing it safely. Even the pleasure one takes in a

  flower-and this is true even of a botanist who knows all there is to be

  known about the flower is dependent partly on the sense of mystery. But

  meanwhile man's power over Nature is steadily increasing. With the aid of

  the atomic bomb we could literally move mountains: we could even, so it

  is said, alter the climate of the earth by melting the polar ice-caps and

  irrigating the Sahara. Isn't there, therefore, something sentimental and

  obscurantist in preferring bird-song to swing music and in wanting to

  leave a few patches of wildness here and there instead of covering the

  whole surface of the earth with a network of Autobahnen flooded by

  artificial sunlight?

  The question only arises because in exploring the physical universe man

  has made no attempt to explore himself. Much of what goes by the name of

  pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness. If one started by